Weird object on the Moon

For the record, I normally don't get very excited about every supposed anomolous object people think that they see in any given NASA photo of the moon or Mars. In reality, I either can't see what they're talking about because they're just trying too hard to see something that isn't there to start with or they are misidentifing a rock.
However, I've lately read the most recent installment of the Richard Hoagland series of books about Mars and the moon. I'm not doing a book review here, so I'll skip to the chase. There was one photo from the moon (Apollo 17) that I thought was especially intriguing, so I downloaded the photo and had a closer look. After a bit of brightening to better bring the object into view, I, now, must admit that there appears to be a real tangible object in the photo that has no business being on the moon. The photo catalog number is AS17-136-20767 and I downloaded it from Spacearchive.net

Here is the original version (object in upper left hand quadrant barely visible just above the hillside)

Original

Here is the slighty brightened version

Brightened Version

And here is a cropped version that shows a closer view of the object

Cropped Version

To me this looks like something (a metal beam of some type?) leaning against the distant hillside. I'm not 100% sure of the scale, but whatever that thing is it's at least hundreds of feet long and maybe thousands.

i guess NASA forgot to remove that plant before making the pic...

Great find OP, I can't tell you what this is but it does look some type of a rod, or metal cable going from the bottom of the hill to the top, but for what purpose?

I'll see what else I can do with the picture to get a better opinion on this.

Perhaps a hair on the film during processing/enlarging?

Yup. A hair or a scratch. Look on your brightened copy and it goes all the way down the hillside.

Better copies of this image from other sources do not show this "object":
history.nasa.gov...
The only mystery here is who donated their hair. I'm sure Hoagland would disagree though, got books to sell.

[edit on 17-8-2008 by ngchunter]

reply to post by ngchunter


+Star
Good find! Looks like case closed for this "object"

looks like an imperfection in the equipment during capture of the image

Thanks, all. I'm definitely not a photo expert. However, that hair or whatever it is really looks like something real in the photo. I did a little more digging after I posted this last night and I found other versions of the same photo that didn't have the 'object'. Later, I found a website where this was being discussed and a guy actually made a copy of the photo with one of his own hairs in it and it looked very similar to this one. So, yeah, I think case closed.

P.S. I'm not doing any more photographic anomaly posts!

Originally posted by sjag9
P.S. I'm not doing any more photographic anomaly posts!

Why not?

If you come across something you find puzzling ATS is a good place to post about it. The peanut gallery will soon sort it out or not. Either way we all learn something and that's the important thing.

Yeah, it looks like some flaw in the negative.